Mark Ciavarella

Mark Arthur Ciavarella Jr. (born March 3, 1950) is an American convicted felon and former President Judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, who was involved, along with fellow judge Michael Conahan, in the "Kids for cash" scandal in 2008, for which he was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison in 2011.

Ciavarella was a lifelong resident of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, having been raised in the East End section of the city and attending St. Mary's High School.

After graduating from the local King's College he attended Duquesne University School of Law, receiving his J.D. degree in 1975.

Ciavarella entered private legal practice, becoming a partner in the firm of Lowery, Ciavarella and Rogers.

From 1976 to 1978, he was city solicitor and then from 1978 until 1995, he served as solicitor for the city zoning board.

In 1995, he ran for judge in Luzerne County on the Democratic ticket and was elected to a ten-year term.

He was re-elected to a second ten-year term in 2005.

Ciavarella was also active in several civic and Catholic organizations.

He was married to the former Cindy Baer and the couple have three children.

Ciavarella pleaded guilty on February 13, 2009, pursuant to a plea agreement, to federal charges of honest services fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion in connection with receiving $2.6 million in kickbacks from Robert Powell and Robert Mericle, the co-owner and builder respectively, of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities of PA Child Care.

In exchange for these kickbacks, Ciavarella sentenced children to extended stays in juvenile detention for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, and shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart.

More specifically, the crimes charged were: conspiracy to deprive the public of the "intangible right of honest services", or corruption, and conspiracy to defraud the United States by failing to report income to the Internal Revenue Service.

Ciavarella tendered his resignation to Governor Ed Rendell on January 23, 2009, prior to official publication of the charges.

The plea agreement witnessed by defense attorneys Albert Flora and William Ruzzo called for Ciavarella to serve up to seven years in prison, pay fines and restitution, and accept responsibility for the crimes.

However, Ciavarella denied that there was a connection between the juvenile sentences he rendered and the kickbacks he received.

In part because of this denial, on July 30, 2009, Judge Edwin M. Kosik of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania rejected the plea agreement.

He ruled that Ciavarella had continued to deny that there was a "quid pro quo" between his receipt of money and his jailing of juveniles, instead characterizing the money as a "finder’s fee" despite what Judge Kosik felt was the weight of the government's evidence.

Attorneys for the judge and his co-conspirator, Michael Conahan, brought a motion requesting reconsideration of the judge's rejection of the plea agreement.

The motion was denied on August 24, and Ciavarella and Conahan withdrew their guilty pleas, resulting in the case going to trial.

On September 9, 2009, a federal grand jury in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, returned a 48-count indictment against Ciavarella and Conahan, which included racketeering, fraud, money laundering, extortion, bribery, and federal tax violations.

Both judges were arraigned on the charges on September 15, 2009.

Ciavarella and Conahan entered pleas of not guilty to the 48-count indictment, and remained free on $1 million bail, despite federal prosecutors contentions that their bail should be raised since they now faced the possibility of substantially more prison time and that there was evidence of their attempts to shield assets.

They separated on September 15, 2010, and in May 2013, she filed for divorce.

On February 18, 2011, a jury in federal court found Ciavarella guilty of racketeering.

This charge stemmed from Ciavarella accepting $997,000 in illegal payments from Robert Mericle, the real estate developer of PA Child Care, and attorney Robert Powell, a co-owner of the facility.

Ciavarella was also on trial for 38 other counts including accepting numerous payments from Mericle and Powell as well as tax evasion.

On August 11, 2011, Kosik sentenced Ciavarella to 28 years in federal prison.

Ciavarella appealed his conviction and sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

On May 24, 2013, the Third Circuit vacated one count of the indictment against Ciavarella, but upheld all other charges, as well as his sentence.

The Third Circuit refused to reconsider on July 24, 2013.

The Supreme Court, which rarely accepts such cases, declined to hear the appeal in 2014, although Ciavarella could file a post-conviction relief motion before U.S. District Court within one year.

With good behavior, he could be released in fewer than 24 years, when he would be 85.

Ciavarella initially served his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Pekin in Pekin, Illinois.

He is registered as inmate 15008–067 at the Federal Correctional Institution at Ashland, Kentucky.

His projected release date is June 18, 2034.

On January 9, 2018, federal judge Christopher C. Conner threw out Ciavarella's convictions for racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and conspiracy to commit money laundering on appeal.

Conner upheld Civarella's contention that his attorneys failed to raise statute of limitations claims on those charges.

He ordered a new trial on those counts, but allowed the honest services fraud convictions to stand.

On January 24, 2020, prosecutors formally notified the court that they would not seek to retry Ciaverella on these three counts.

In response, Ciavarella's defense attorneys sought a reduction of his prison sentence, which was rejected.